


Deviance

by OrangeDodge



Category: Marvel Ultimate Universe, Marvel Ultimates, Spider-Man (Ultimateverse), X-Men (Ultimateverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: (in spirit), 100 Themes Challenge, Canon Compliant, Genderqueer Character, Other, Transgendered Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-13 22:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2168079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrangeDodge/pseuds/OrangeDodge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few moments between the pages for Agent Jessica Drew: an illegal CIA genetics experiment, reluctant SHIELD Agent, New Ultimate, and confused teenager; and her best friend, Katherine Pryde, a former X-Man, current roommate, unapologetic terrorist, and a past life's ex-girlfriend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Firsts

**Author's Note:**

> My life is being ruthlessly devoured by a canon-compliant Kitty/Xi'an story that keeps getting longer and angrier, and then terser and more depressing. I thought I'd write something faster (and happier) in the meantime, as an alternative to going back to therapy and admitting that I'm an idiot. I had a few ideas, and in the end it was either this, or a story about All-New X-Men #25 alternate universes. I flipped a coin, basically. Characters are Jessica Drew and Kitty Pryde, in Marvel Entertainment's Ultimate Comics setting. Other characters may show up, but it'll basically be limited to the cast of All-New Ultimates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Deviance – The Ballad of Kitty and Jess**

_An “All-New Ultimates” 100 Themes vignette series_

**J.M. Andersen**

 

 

 

 

**Prompt 1 - “Firsts”**

 

 

It was the Monday after the battle in Newark, the first time anyone had ever rung her condo over the intercom. She half-expected tax collectors.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Jessica? It's Katherine. Can I come upstairs?”

 

“I um, I don't know a Catherine.”

 

“Yes, you do.”

 

“Um, no?”

 

“Sound it out.”

 

“...oh. Oh, right.”

 

“Can I come up? Its raining.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, of course. One sec.”

 

“You do remember me, right?”

 

“ _Yeah._ I remember you.”

 

* * *

 

The first time they saw each other, they were both riding the 7, as the train was passing underneath the East River.

 

One of them had changed off the Seventh Avenue Local, two stops ago, from an afternoon audition at Lincoln Center. It was something the headmaster of her old school had promised to help her out with, a long time ago. When she had first arrived at his school, he had pulled some strings to get her a spot in weekly classes with a former principal dancer of the New York City Ballet. Even after their falling out, he had still kept his word and helped her this once again, now that Stevie had endorsed her readiness.

 

She was wearing loose jeans and a red hoodie over her audition clothes, her feet covered up by a pair of secondhand Doc Martens, and her ballet shoes and leg warmers tossed into her backpack along with her wallet and smart phone. She was sitting alone, even on a somewhat crowded train. Her phone was transmitting a low quality CD rip of an old Super Junky Monkey album into her wireless headset, while she waited for the end of the line.

 

The other one had just walked on, after riding the shuttle to Grand Central. She was running almost half-an-hour early for her shift at work, but had nothing else to do anyway, and there was no utility in acting like she was afraid of a place. Even if she was only living on the other side of the river, she had wanted to get out of Queens for the rest of her life, but only a few weeks later and she already had a full time job in Hunter's Point. She just had to make due with her unpleasant circumstances.

 

She was wearing a barista's uniform, absent the apron and hat, and had elected to stand with a loose grip on one of the subway poles. Even though her eyes weren't darting around, it was obvious that she was wary of the people around her. The other girl—and they both looked to be just a pair of normal teenagers—had looked up, alerted to how ill at ease she looked. She was the only thing worth looking at, because she was the only person in the car drawing attention to herself. Everyone else was just waiting, dead to the world, for their station and the opportunity to move on with their lives. 

 

The brunette in the barista's uniform, on the other hand, looked at nerve's end. She was standing like she hadn't yet become accustomed to cramped rides with strangers. She probably looked like an out-of-towner, in a new job and anxious of all the sensationalist stories of horrible things that happen on New York trains. Except, she wasn't holding on to the safety bar like she was afraid of falling down, and most people new to the city tended to look at the map.

 

The brief moment of eye contact between them, brought about by a coincidence in schedules, and a momentary lapse of post-stress adjustment, could have gone down as their first and only. Just a single incidental meeting between two people on the outskirts of similar social circles. But then Electro decided that it was a perfect day to try and blow up a train.

 

* * *

 

Jessica had just buzzed her up to her sparsely furnished home, a third floor condo in a converted Chelsea, Manhattan row house, when she realized that she didn't even know what to say to her. They hadn't exactly left it on the best of terms. They hadn't really left it on any terms at all. She had just left the country abruptly, enlisted herself into the war, all without a word. She had basically left Johnny behind to die, and skipped out of town. Jessica didn't even know she was gone until uploads of her demands had started trending online.

 

She opened the door to the stairs, and a girl about her age and her height, with black eyes and short dark hair, strolled in after her without really saying hello. But that was Kitty for you. Jessica's one-time best friend: cute punk rocker from Flushing, and an anarchist revolutionary, jaded Star Wars fan, and shoot 'em up aficionado, who had been studying ballet and wushu since she was old enough to walk. When she walked into your home, it really was like you were hosting an alley cat—it was her building, not yours, and just hope you remembered to keep your food hidden away where tiny little paws couldn't reach.

 

Circumstances had meant that they'd only seen each other sporadically over the last two years, ever since Peter's funeral. They were about the same height now, so Kitty must have hit a late growth spurt sometime before she turned eighteen. She had expected a hat and sunglasses, the world renowned favorite disguise of famous and infamous people the world over (whether they be actors or uncharged war criminals), and to be fair, she _was_ wearing a baseball cap. But if Kitty hadn't still been carrying around that same taped-up black backpack, with that stupid Spider-Man plushie sarcastically safety-pinned to the remaining side pocket, it might have taken her a while to recognize her.

 

The _Dazzler_ band shirt and the mismatching jeans and denim jacket were common enough elements to Kitty's recent homeless period that they wouldn't have thrown her. Her skin looked a lot darker, but that wasn't shocking for someone who had led a military campaign in the desert, and she had seen her often enough in the news to expect it. Instead, it was the change in appearance since her last media appearance six days ago, that took her aback.

 

“Wow.”

 

“Yep.”

 

“They teach you that at X-Man training?”

 

“God yes. My cosplay got ten times better after the first month. I went to Liz Allen's Halloween party as Liz Allen.”

 

“Of course you did.” Don't even know what to say to that, Jessica thought. “I was kind of expecting you to keep your face covered in public.”

 

“That's for people who secretly _want_ to get noticed and recognized.”

 

She was just wearing makeup, but it was a lot more makeup than usual, and what she had put on worked so well with her outfit and the face full of metal studs and rings that it was hard even notice what it was doing to tone down the shape of her face. The darker-than-usual lipstick and the dusting of extra gunk around her eyes just seemed like an accessory to the piercings and trashy band shirt, and not worth paying attention to. It made it harder to notice slight contouring color above her eyes, when your focus was immediately drawn to the silver rings running through her right eyebrow, or to the curved barbell on the other side. The same way with the two tiny rings in the side of her nose, and the the slight highlighting on each side that made it look wider and broader. She'd played around with darkening and contouring the hollow area of her cheeks, in conjunction with the way her hair fell near her jaw, to smooth out her face and make it look slightly oval.

 

“Pinstripes?” Jessica noted, as Kitty pulled off her Yankees ball cap and crumpled it, uncaring, into her jacket pocket. “That must kill you in a million ways.”

 

“ _Ugh_ , I know, right? I needed the extra shadow for my forehead. Its all I could find. I felt more dirty walking through Midtown than I ever did when I was living in sewer tunnels.”

 

She can almost see the flash of a metal bead on Kitty's tongue—and no, she definitely went all the way with that. She'd kind of wondered if the nose and eyebrow rings were just clipped on.

 

“I can't believe you just took off. You didn't even tell anyone you were still alive. Again.”

 

“I couldn't think about anything but how bad I needed to pass out somewhere. Tony and Spider-Man saw me. I wasn't thinking about it, but didn't they say anything?”

 

“They knew you survived the fight, but then you just wandered off on your own. I mean, Stark injected you with bottled crazy, and then you didn't even stick around for a checkup. We didn't know you weren't in a hospital, or if you were in a morgue, or at the bottom of the bay. ”

 

Speaking of drowning: Kitty's clothes and hair are wet, but the rest of her is not, which seemed to suggest mutant superpower antics were at work. So much for everyone being created equal, Jessica thought. She got icky little spray glands beneath her fingernails, which in practice meant lots of time spent picking bits of gunk out from underneath them, along with a desperate need for nail polish if she wanted to avoid grossing people out, and a perpetual fear of accidentally webbing her lunch. Kitty, on the other hand, got to be dry.

 

“So where have you been?”

 

“Devora's house,” that being Kitty's mother, who she _also_ didn't speak to for most of the last few years. “She said she was happy to see me... I don't know, it was getting too crowded on her lawn to stick around. You don't mind, right?”

 

“No, I don't mind. Don't get me wrong, it would have been nice for you to call in advance. But you wouldn't be you if you did.”

 

“I could have just moved in without telling you. You never would have known, until you got your water bill.”

 

“I think I would have noticed you sleeping on the couch.”

 

“Not if I phased. I could sleep _inside_ of the couch.”

 

“How did you survive at boarding school, without having boundaries?”

 

“I _did_ buzz your door. Unlike last time.” Doors are boundaries.

 

“Last _two_ times.” Not to you, they're not.

 

The first time had been two days after the assassination of Scott Summers. Jessica had come home to find Kitty already passed out on her coffee table, extremities splayed over the edge, and her soul wholly given over to the majestic healing power of gravity. They'd been impromptu roommates for the better part of a week until Kitty had left to finish her business in Westchester with the other surviving remnants of the X-Men.

 

The second time, Kitty had been missing for a month after firebombing a news truck and publicly thrashing Peter, and both of their friends, on her mother's front lawn. Once again Jessica had just come home one day and found Kitty waiting for her, unannounced: this time in the kitchen, ostensibly cooking dinner as a half-baked apology for all the food she ate the last time she snuck in.

 

“So I'm learning.” Okay, fair.

 

“That's true. First time for everything.” Welcome home, I guess.

 

Kitty just beamed and dropped her backpack into the umbrella bucket.

 

Thanks.

 


	2. Enthusiasm

**Deviance – The Ballad of Kitty and Jess**

_An “All-New Ultimates” 100 Themes vignette series_

**J.M. Andersen**

 

 

 

 

**Prompt 2 - “Enthusiasm”**

 

 

 

 

Kitty had left her damp shoes at the door, and spent the next short while wandering through Jessica's condo and flipping restlessly through her things.

 

“Having fun?” Jessica asked, as Kitty carelessly surveyed one of the bookcases in the living area, trailing her finger across a row of pre-owned DVD and Blu-ray re-releases that were sandwiched between her electrical and computer engineering text books. On the whole, Jessica seemed to have more interesting tastes than Peter, liking a lot of the same science fiction, but with some classic monster movies and early Hammer Horror thrown in. Plus, not many people would put _The_ _Hound of the Baskervilles_ on the same shelf as Cozzilla—and most of those who did probably made the mistake of being ashamed of it. 

 

“Yeah. You have some good stuff,” she replied, before catching sight of something tucked away at the far wall. “Oh, wow. And that's a _very_ nice serial killer wall you have there. One of the Top Three I've seen, easily.”

 

“Aw, thanks. I worked hard on that all weekend.”

 

“I think the little details like current addresses, and that stalker close-up of Spider-Man and his girlfriend, are what make it really pop.”

 

“I thought so too.”

 

Jessica had a set of whiteboards lined up next to one another, leaning against the half-wall that partly enclosed the kitchen area and separated it from the rest of the main loft. It was good to see that, in this modern age of Stark Tech talking holograms, kids still had an appreciation for the classics. She had about four dozen image printouts scattered around in various tree groupings and clusters. It had everyone on it. The Ultimates, Fantastic Four, Utopia's active combat teams, the leaders of SHIELD, and every known independent superhuman. They were all held up by a number of nickel-sized circular magnets and then, when she ran out, a bunch of souvenir refrigerator magnets. They were all connected together by color-coded pieces of yarn, with more pre cut-strips laying off to the side on top of a chair.

 

To the top right was Captain America, held up by a green magnet shaped like a starfish, grouped together along with Thor, Vision, the Punisher and others. Many of them had cutouts of obituaries and official statements from the government hanging underneath them. They were all of the ones confirmed dead or, at least, the ones who might as well be. Elsewhere, Kitty saw her own picture, grouped closely with Bruce Banner, the Ghost Rider, and Peter's neighbor, Rick, as well as a few faces she recognized from web articles on the Ultimates. They were posted under a giant question mark drawn in orange pen marker (smudged orange pen marker, from where _someone_ had realized it wasn't a dry erase marker and had tried to clean it off before it could dry—and failed).

 

The Ultimates were grouped with Tony Stark at the top, connected together with orange yarn. Monica Chang and everyone affiliated with SHIELD were a side branch to them, along with the Fantastic Four. The other Utopia mutants had their own hierarchy arranged the same way, and were, for the most part, represented by their school pictures. The independents were at the bottom of the middle board, though the new Spider-Man, along with Tandy Bowen, and two other people that Kitty didn't recognize, were connected to each other, and to Jessica, with green. Half of them had the addresses of temporary shelters, military forts, and even hospital room numbers scrawled next to them.

 

“If you're planning a string of hits, I still have an army. You know, if we're planning for world domination after all remaining resistance has been removed.”

 

“Tempting. I'm just trying to keep track of whose left. The rest of SHIELD's gone, at least for now. The military's on alert, but they can't respond fast enough to super-powered crime or terrorism. Speaking of...”

 

She reached down and removed the bottle opener novelty magnet that was holding Kitty's picture up, before moving it to right above Jean Grey's angry mugshot, at the top of the Utopia photo tree. She stuffed a piece of orange yarn beneath the magnet, before connecting the other end to Jean's, and then repeating the process with Tony's except using a blue strand.

 

“There, perfect. Everything's up to date.”

 

“Utopia's still fine,” Kitty said. “They can handle everything for a while, at least now that everyone is busy pretending that they don't hate mutants anymore.”

 

Jessica just gave her an iced over look.

 

“I didn't just ignore _everything_. Jean gave me an update when I was sleeping it all off. They can still have a team anywhere on the planet in under five minutes.”

 

“Maybe, but your Marvel Girl's gone off the deep end before, and we still need to keep our own streets clean.”

 

“She's going by Phoenix now, actually,” Kitty said, though she was paying more attention towards scrutinizing her picture. “That's a really bad shot of me.”

 

“Its from your official file.”

 

“My official file makes me like a chipmunk.”

 

“I was thinking more of a ferret,” Jessica said.

 

Kitty just tilted her head side to side and held her jaw in false contemplation.

 

“Yeah, I could see that.”

 

“Thanks for not going through my room again, by the way.”

 

“Your room's not that interesting. You don't even keep your desktop in there anymore. Just a bed and a bunch of pretty dresses. By the way, can I ask about that?”

 

“I'd rather you not.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Maybe some other time,” Jessica offered.

 

Kitty shrugged and went quiet for a moment. Her gaze lingered on the publicity photo of Captain America—of former President Steve Rogers, being sworn in. The Ultimates were all there, if she remembered right, and were just cropped out of that clipping. Did Jessica know him well? Peter had admired him, at least, and Jessica had ended out with far more chances to interact with him.

 

Kitty at least supposed that she was meant to agree that his death was a great loss for everyone, but even if he was a dead war hero, he was still the jerk who sold her out.

 

“So... how did you make it out of things?” she asked.

 

“I'm still alive. That probably counts as 'alright,' compared to most of us,” Jessica rubbed her eyes a bit, while pinching the bridge of her nose. “Jeez, I don't even blame you for not sticking around for the cleanup.”

 

“You were the one who found Rogers?”

 

“Yeah... I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like someone needs to get everyone back together...”

 

“...but you have no idea how to just point to the wreckage of an entire city, and all of the people we just lost, and ask your friends to come back for more?”

 

“I don't even know if _I_ want to go back. I feel like I'm just about at my limit.”

 

“Yeah. Been there.”

 

“Yeah. You have. How did you come back from that?”

 

“I didn't, remember? I stood around and let a lot of people die before I did anything about Stryker. And I only did that because Rogue pissed me off.”

 

“So you're saying you've got nothing.”

 

Kitty just spread her arms wide and gave a full body shrug.

 

“Guilt. There's always that, right?”

 

“Great. I feel like this is going to kill me if I don't stop. But I know that if I do, someone will eventually die that I could have saved, and that will be my fault.” She plopped down on her blue two-seat couch, her back facing Kitty.

 

“Its not like you haven't been through this before either, right? You were there after the flood. Was Newark really any more messed up? What'd you do after the flood, Jess? You never told me.”

 

“Infiltrated Roxxon.”

 

“ _Those_ douche bags.”

 

“Yeah. Those douche bags exactly.”

 

“They're still around.”

 

“That they are.”

 

“I'm not a bad thief. And I'm a pretty good hacker.”

 

“That you are,” Jessica smiled.

 

“C'mon, break out your tablet. I know you've probably got 'Spider-Woman's Annotated Crime Diary' on there somewhere. _Show me_ _some stories_.”

 

“You sure you're up for it? You seemed like you wanted out.”

 

“Of fighting inter-dimensional space gods. I think I'm good for a heist or two. Besides, I've been thinking of paying those assholes back for a friend of mine anyway.”

 

Jessica thought about it for a moment.

 

She didn't have to think about it for long.

 

“Alright. Let's start by getting you up-to-speed on their Brain Trust.”

 

 

 


	3. Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Changed the summary a little to reflect that I have a slightly better idea of what I'm actually writing about. 
> 
> I see that 18 people have read this, and one of you even kudo'd me, so thanks for that, guys. I have a shocking amount of fun watching that little hit counter slowly ticking up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Deviance – The Ballad of Kitty and Jess**

_An “All-New Ultimates” 100 Themes vignette series_

**J.M. Andersen**

 

 

 

 

**Prompt 3 - “Love”**

 

 

 

 

 

They were streaming a movie off the cloud and onto Jessica's OLED hybrid TV (that she purchased months ago on the sustained theory that the Department of Defense's guilt-money was the best kind of money. Thor had called it _weregeld_ , which seemed appropriate). They had a pair of Jessica's tablets out, networked together, and were reviewing files and floor plans while watching—or trying to watch, in Jessica's case—the film.

 

“I get that this is a genre thing, and it just _has_ to exist, but why didn't they just build a normal looking robot?” It was late. Jessica was laying out over the couch, her knees folded over one armrest. Her head was crushed against one of the throw pillows caught in the other corner of the couch, with her hair draped jaggedly over the edge.

 

“Its not a robot, its a monster in armor,” Kitty said, as she leaned her head over and to the side, so that she could make eye contact with her. “They had the skeleton and some tissue samples left over from the original one, and created a bio-mechanical cyborg with a human pilot.”

 

Kitty was just using her mutation to comfortably float two feet off the ground, making something of a L-shape with the couch, their heads only a foot apart. She had her ankles crossed, leaning back and into nothing in an inscrutable imitation of a deck chair, as she alternated between scrolling through Roxxon employee files and leaning back up to look at the movie. She dragged-and-dropped the file she was last looking at onto Jessica's screen. “I think I could pass for her.”

 

“Did they explain that in the movie?” Jessica asked, while minimizing a schematic detail, from the Roxxon Building's electrical plan, to make room for Kitty's file.

 

This was not the first time that Jessica and Kitty had blown off, or “enhanced” (as Kitty put it), what they were supposed to be doing in favor of having a movie night. Sometimes it was only a fun laugh, but sometimes it was a fun laugh with an added undercurrent of something else that threatened to make her distinctly uncomfortable. This was one of the latter, and verging on becoming one of the very worst. They were watching without subtitles, because it was Kitty's copy, and she didn't need them. The language was different, this time, but it still reminded her of the first time she had gone to the movies with Kitty.

 

“Yeah, during the presentation scene,” Kitty responded.

 

It was more than two and a half years ago, on a Saturday afternoon. Kitty's weekend classes were over, and she was already in the area, so they'd impulsively gotten together and decided to catch a film at the Bollywood Theater in Fresh Meadows. Jessica didn't really remember watching an Indian action movie, so much as she remembered Kitty getting really handsy in that theater—and, of course, Jessica remembered having different equipment at the time.

 

“So basically you lied when you said the subtitles wouldn't be important. We're watching one of my movies next,” Jessica said. She had given the file on her tablet a brief look, before zooming in on the attached security photo for a closer view. “The nose and her cheeks are too different.”

 

“Its still doable, I think. I can mix some foam latex and build up,” Kitty shrugged. “Adding is easier than subtracting.”

 

“Ok, if you say so. We'll still need her security badge, fingerprints, a voice sample, maybe an iris scan...” Jessica counted off.

 

“I can get the first two, easy. I'm ok with voices, if I practice, but I can't guarantee anything if I have to talk too much.”

 

“SHIELD has a gizmo for changing voices in real-time, but we'll need to collect a full audio sample for it to synthesize her voice right. That's forty different phonemes, for American English,” she explained. The actual piece of equipment wouldn't be that hard to get a hold of, at least. Even with all of the chaos in the government, and the destruction of the Tricarrier, and the depletion of military and police assets, SHIELD's logistics division was sill more-or-less intact.

 

“We can pull most of them off of her voice mail message,” Kitty suggested. “Maybe I can record some of her outgoing calls, if we need more. Do you have anything for the iris pattern?”

 

How do you even bring something like that up? Jessica wondered. She wasn't a stranger to having unresolved sexual tension with one of Peter's exes, but Kitty was both the only one she'd ever roomed with, and the only one she had dissociative memories of intimacy with. They'd talked about it—about her connection to Peter's memories—before, of course. But never really the specifics of them. There were a lot of shared memories like that, things she was hanging on to, that she didn't know how to bring up. At least not without it sounding like creepy, awkward, flirting. Nothing was worth that level of mortification, and more importantly, she had no idea how Kitty would actually react to it: there was a difference between knowing, and even understanding, how confused your friend was and actually being drawn into it yourself. And it wasn't like Kitty was above just packing up and leaving if things got too uncomfortable.

 

She didn't notice she had zoned out until Kitty's fingers were snapping, right in front of her eyes.

 

“Yeah, I wrote a forensics plug-in for GIMP. It can isolate an iris structure from a digital image. I can load it into your phone, but you'll need to be right on top of her to get a shot that'll work.”

 

“I was going to have to pick her pocket anyway,” Kitty said, before going back to watching the television screen.

 

“I still don't get it,” Jessica said, eyes drifting to the screen. “What's with the little girl and that plant? Why's she carrying it around in a military base?”

 

It occurred to her then, that Kitty's face was way too close to her own. And there was something extra about it, now that her face was clean again. She'd washed all of that extra makeup off and stuffed all of her little silver rings and studs into a little plastic baggie, and suddenly it was like the last three years of their lives had gone away with them. If only she'd been alive three years ago too.

 


End file.
